Free Web NovelChapter 3: Tasting Newfound Power
Ronan stepped out of the shrine and into a world that no longer felt the same.
The violet moon still hung overhead, casting that sickly glow across the dead city. The buildings still sagged. The moss still swallowed the streets. Everything looked identical to how it had when he’d crawled inside to die.
But he could feel the difference.
The air pressed against his skin like it was alive. Every shadow seemed deeper, every patch of darkness between collapsed buildings felt like a doorway he could step through if he wanted.
He didn’t understand it yet. But he would.
"Alright." Ronan rolled his shoulders, testing his body. "I can do this..."
He needed to find the exit gate. Every World-Class Gate had a return portal somewhere on the other side. The expedition had lost it after week two, when the monsters overran their forward camp and scattered everyone to the winds.
Somewhere in this corpse of a city, a way out was waiting.
And between him and it?
Forty-seven days’ worth of things that had tried to kill him.
Ronan started walking.
The first monster found him three blocks from the shrine.
They were natives from this world; his old team called them bone-faces. Ronan knew them too well. Eight feet of sinew and bone, no skin, just raw muscle stretched over a frame that moved like liquid.
Its face was a smooth plate of keratin with a single vertical slit that split open when it sensed prey.
C-Rank monsters capable of splitting an entire man in two with their bare hands.
He’d lost two friends to Stalkers in the first week. Fast little bastards that hunted in packs and bled ink when you cut them.
This one was alone. Separated from its pack, maybe. Either that or it was scouting.
It didn’t matter for Ronan.
It saw him. The slit on its face yawned open, revealing rows of needle teeth and a tongue that split into three whip-like tendrils.
It charged.
"Already...!?"
Ronan bit his tongue again, preventing himself from screaming as he accessed his inventory. He may have had his class changed, but he still had his former team’s inventory on him.
[Steel Javelin]
The weapon manifested in his hands, and with sheer fear and instinct, he threw it as hard as he could. To his surprise, the force alone was enough to explode the air upon release, sending him skidding backward as the javelin flew.
The impact rang out like thunder when the javelin reached the bone-face’s head, exploding it like a watermelon and spraying black ink in every direction.
The monster collapsed soon after, with the javelin’s shaft now lying uselessly on the ground, its blade at the tip completely shattered.
"O-One shot!?"
[Soul Absorbed]
[100 EXP]
Ronan stared at the corpse, his chest heaving.
One javelin and one throw were all it took. A C-Rank monster that would have taken his old party of fifteen at least three minutes to bring down, and he’d killed it in a single breath.
His hands were shaking.
The realization that he had just done the impossible was almost too much to contain.
"System!"
[Ronan Night]
[Class: God-Bound (???)]
[Level: 1 → 2]
[STR: 15 +20] -> [STR: 16 +20]
[AGI: 13 +20] -> [AGI: 14 +20] free𝑤ebnovel.com
[CON: 11 +20] -> [CON: 12 +20]
[MAG: 5 +20] -> [MAG: 6 +20]
[Available Points: 0] - [Data Corrupted] [Unable to Gain]
[Shadow Consume: Active]
A notification he hadn’t expected.
Ronan looked down at the bone-face’s corpse. The black ink pooling around its shattered skull wasn’t spreading anymore. It was moving, crawling toward his feet like it had a will of its own.
The shadow beneath the monster stretched, twisted, and detached from the body.
Ronan watched, frozen, as the bone-face’s silhouette rose from the ground like smoke. It hovered in the air for a moment, formless and dark, then shot toward him and sank into his own shadow.
Information flooded his mind.
[Shadow Stored: Bone-Face Stalker (C-Rank)]
[Summon: Yes/No]
[Inherit: Yes/No]
[Discard: Yes/No]
"Summon," Ronan whispered, barely believing the word left his mouth.
His shadow rippled.
The bone-face rose from the ground behind him, silent and whole. Its needle teeth glinted in the violet moonlight. Its three-tongued tendril flicked out, tasting the air.
But it didn’t attack.
It stood perfectly still, waiting.
Ronan turned slowly, his heart hammering. The monster was easily twice his height. Its empty eye slits stared down at him with no hostility, no hunger. freewёbnoνel.com
Just obedience.
"Back," he said.
The bone-face dissolved into shadow and vanished.
"Holy shit."
He stood there for a long moment, processing what had just happened. Two hundred percent of its original strength. That’s what the skill description had said. He’d killed it with one javelin at its normal strength.
If he summoned it now?
He’d have a C-Rank monster that hit like a low B-Rank.
At level two.
Ronan bent down and retrieved the shattered javelin shaft. The blade was gone, useless now, but he had more weapons in his inventory. The dead hunters’ supplies had to last until he found the exit.
But now, he had to take another look at his system.
With each level up, he now gained one point in each stat. Previously, only his MAG didn’t increase when levelling up, and each level gave him a single distributable point.
Now, however, every stat increased automatically, but at the cost of having no points to allocate.
He couldn’t really complain. Wanting distributable points on top of that would be overkill. Given his current skill set, he accepted the change almost immediately.
After all, he could borrow the stats of the monsters he killed.
"Of course I’d get no distributable skill points..."
Ronan knelt beside the bone-face’s corpse, still processing the impossibility of what he’d just done. His hands had stopped shaking, replaced by a strange calm that felt almost foreign after forty-seven days of constant terror.
"Shadow Consume," he muttered, testing the words on his tongue. "Summon their shadow at two hundred percent strength, or take their stats."
He looked down at the dead monster.
Inherit.
The option had glowed in his vision, tempting him. If he inherited the bone-face’s stats, he’d be stronger permanently as long as he kept it. But then he’d lose the summon. One or the other. The system had made that clear.
Not yet.
He needed to understand what he was working with before making decisions like that.
But he definitely didn’t regret using it as a summon. He might be strong now, but he still wasn’t a combat expert. Having someone stand between him and the enemy while he thought and planned was the best choice he could have made.
Ronan stood, dusted off his pants, and kept walking.
